À propos

My name is Michel Dufour and I’m an amateur photographer. I always had a fascination for images and it’s for that reason that I build this Website to share the passion. My story begins in my youth: my father had a 35mm Minolta film camera that he used a lot (we still have a huge amount of negatives and slides). By the way, I find amusing that the newer digitals mirrorless camera have almost the same look of that camera! I still have memories of him showing endless slides on the projector at family gatherings ☺

For me, the revelation came on seeing the pictures made by a Pentax single lens reflex: the look of them images it made, especially with the dept of field effect of a zoom just left in awed. t Evidently, that new ‘toy” wasn’t for me ! I wasn’t allowed to use the camera and I certainly couldn’t shoot that many frame that we can now do with DSLR. I elected to play with my parent’s discarded camera: a Polaroid_Swinger. I remember playing the photographer like a journalist. It was fun but I didn’t really produce any images back then !

Then my dream of using the Pentax shattered: my dad had fallen for a 8mm film video camera. It still had that fascination on my me: we could actually jump like the six million dollar man in shooting high speed then playing back at normal rate. That 8mm format was rapidly overcome by the new video trend. The film camera was left unused and the dreams slowly faded. It would be many year until I would renew with SLR camera. My dad bought an Olympus OM-10, one of the first camera to integrate electronic in the exposure decision making. By that time, I was in college and the only camera I could afford was the 110 “microscopic” format ! But, later, my dad offered me the use of the camera. I devoured photo books and try to reproduces the wonderful images I was seeing. Unfortunately, the camera had a flaw in it’s electronic. The impact was missed exposures on 2/3 of the photo taken because the camera would select a wrong speed. I hadn’t mastered the manual mode and I certainly couldn’t do like digital cameras of today: delete and start over again !

When digital photography started to gain some attention, I purchased a compact Pentax de 2.3 megapixels that was almost the same price of the DSLRs of today! I got me going and I photographed and photographed and… I quickly reached the limitations of a compact camera even tough it was still fun. Then I got interested in digital video filming. I bought a used prosumer video camera, a model I could tweak the exposure and dept of field. I started a small business of filming weddings which I did for a few years. I had the present Website build as a storefront for that business. I really like the experience because it’s a privilege to witness (and film) an event so important to people. And then came high definition… I had a choice of overhauling the equipment to 1080p cams or quit ! I chose the later since I had a family to feed. The trend of using DSLR as filming equipment wasn’t in the near future yet !

Then came the era of affordable DSLR so I chose… a Pentax ! It was a great camera, 6 megapixels. But what made it stand out of the competition was the kit lens provided with the camera. I shot pictures and pictures with this camera (probably for all the years I had missed out on the action 🙂 ) I used so much that the sensor started to show signs of fatigue and would show lines at high ISO. It was time to changed ! I elected to switch to Canon.

Since then, I’ve been chasing the landscape and looking for great places to make photographes. But having a family got me to developpe an aptitude to do portrait and events photography. I also preyed on my friends to become “victims” of my photography 🙂

I wish you a warm welcome to my Website and hope that you’ll discover images that you’ll like. Have a great tour !